Jon Stewart: Smart-Ass or Modern-Day Prophet?

For well over six years now my wife and I have faithfully watched "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart". What we have seen take place during those years is nothing short of a metamorphosis from what many considered to be an above average stand-up comic with a gift for interviewing guests to an often irreverent but essential disseminator of information to an audience, the majority of whom neither had the intellectual prowess to understand what he was saying, or the sophistication to care what the ramifications of the program’s material content portended. But, whether the bulk of his audience got it or not, the rest of us not only got it, but applauded, for what might have been initially thought of in its early days as nothing more than a stand in and filler for "South Park" addicts and "Chappelle Show" devotees, has become, ironically enough, THE most topical and informative program on cable television today. Fake news has now trumped “real” news to the dismay of the established “real” news networks, and all I can say is WTF?

How did this admitted pot smoking, smart-ass, stand-up comic, whose crowning achievement was the B-movie flop "Death To Smoochy", rise to such heights? The fact that collectively CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ABC, NBC and CBS can’t do in 24 hours what Stewart does in thirty minutes, should appall any and all who have even a minute interest in the day’s events. Honestly, would any network news program have dared done to Mad Money’s Jim Cramer what Stewart did in his now infamous March 12th interview? http://uk.video.yahoo.com/watch/4668112/12478589

I doubt it. And therein lies the problem. Jon Stewart has ascended to the lofty status of political hatchet man extraordinaire more as a result of an industry’s incompetence and indifference than on the merits of his talent. Not that he isn’t funny and salient, but the fact that he is one of the few courageous voices on television challenging politicians on both sides of the political aisle, as well as taking on the very industry tasked with reporting on their actions in the first place is a sign that something very serious is wrong with the mainstream media. Jon Stewart, for better or worse, has now become the guardian of journalistic integrity. Take out PBS, which does, on a whole, a very good job at reporting the news stories of the day, and the sad and painful truth is that among the rest of the media, you’d be hard-pressed to find enough qualified “journalists" doing the job they were hired to do to fill a small row boat.

Shameful would be a word in a half. How did this travesty happen? As Steve alluded to in one of his comments to my Tim Russert piece two weeks ago corporations now control much if not all of the media reporting that goes on in this country. That isn’t to suggest that parent companies restrict news directors from what they can or can’t report on, but it would be naïve to believe that corporate bottom lines don’t ultimately have the final say in which shows air and when, which stories get promoted, and how “tough” the actual reporting will be. Witness the interview that John King of CNN did with former Vice President Dick Chenney last March. King might just as well have phoned it in as it were. Not once during the entire interview did King challenge Chenney’s assertions. Can you imagine Jon Stewart laying down for that interview? Corporations care most about profits not truth-finding. News shows that show reporters digging in their heals and challenging guests on the truthfulness of their answers may win the respect of colleagues and academicians, but when the average guy in the street turns the channel for a softer, more palatable program, profits plunge. So the message is report, yes, but don’t dig too deep, lest ye lose corporate sponsors.

And you wonder why the Right has been touting the abolishment of Public Broadcasting for years. Were it not for National Public Radio and Television, I dare say most if not all of us would be getting our information from the BBC.

So, for now, we have Jon Stewart, Bill Moyers and Jim Lehrer, and maybe a handful of others standing in the way of total mediocrity. Edward R. Murrow must be spinning around in his grave over the condition of the industry he helped create in the 1950s. In deed in a speech he gave in 1958 to the RTNDA the warning he issued is both ominous and, I’m afraid to say, self-fulfilling. Below is an excerpt from that speech:

“Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. I invite your attention to the television schedules of all networks between the hours of 8 and 11 p.m., Eastern Time. Here you will find only fleeting and spasmodic reference to the fact that this nation is in mortal danger. There are, it is true, occasional informative programs presented in that intellectual ghetto on Sunday afternoons. But during the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: LOOK NOW, PAY LATER.

"For surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communication to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities which must be faced if we are to survive. I mean the word survive literally. If there were to be a competition in indifference, or perhaps in insulation from reality, then Nero and his fiddle, Chamberlain and his umbrella, could not find a place on an early afternoon sustaining show. If Hollywood were to run out of Indians, the program schedules would be mangled beyond all recognition. Then some courageous soul with a small budget might be able to do a documentary telling what, in fact, we have done--and are still doing--to the Indians in this country. But that would be unpleasant. And we must at all costs shield the sensitive citizens from anything that is unpleasant.

"I am entirely persuaded that the American public is more reasonable, restrained and more mature than most of our industry's program planners believe. Their fear of controversy is not warranted by the evidence. I have reason to know, as do many of you, that when the evidence on a controversial subject is fairly and calmly presented, the public recognizes it for what it is--an effort to illuminate rather than to agitate.”

What we desperately need today is a latter day Edward R. Murrow, who calls it as he sees it, doesn’t back down, and who challenges the powers that be. In lieu of someone rising up to recapture the mantle that Murrow built in what currently passes for the mass media in this country, looks like we’ll have to settle for Jon Stewart.